Reseach Case - Openmrs

In enterprise application development a design is implemented to meet the user requirements. When

the user requirements change or when other users want new features the developers have to redesign

build, test and ship a new release. This is the typical software development life cycle. An extensible

system can change that.

Extensibility is the ability of software for future growth. Extensibility does not mean bloated software. It

means the software architecture is designed to incorporate mechanisms for extending the system with

new capabilities without modifying the basic system to satisfy new requirements.

OpenMRS is one such extensible system. It is a community-developed open-source medical record

system. It has been used to record patient data in the HIV treatment programs in Kenya, Rwanda,

Tanzania, multi-drug resistant tuberculosis studies in Peru as well as for pediatric clinics in Indiana and

tuberculosis treatment clinics in Los Angeles, USA.The power of OpenMRS comes from the extensible

data model and the pluggable module architecture.

This research project will investigate and analyze the OpenMRS architecture and find out the keydesign

principles behind the extensible data model and the module architecture of OpenMRS.This research

with the empirical evidence from the extension developer community and analysisof the system and the

source code argues that following these technical and human factor principles the OpenMRS system has

effectively achieved an extensible design. This knowledge will help tounderstand and applyeffective

design principles on how to build extensible software to supportnew requirements without constantly

changing the systems.

I would like to thank all the people that had helped me through my masters. Special thanks to my

supervisors,ProfessorJawed Siddiqi and ProfessorChristopher Bates. Thank you very much for your

patience and guidance.Also I would like to thank all the lecturers and the staff.

I would like to thank Ben Wolfe, Project Manager of Regenstrief Institute, for welcoming me into

OpenMRS and helping me out in all occasions. Without your help I would have achieved

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